Shigetaka Kurita - online puzzles

Online puzzle Shigetaka Kurita

Shigetaka Kurita

Shigetaka Kurita (栗田穣崇) (born May 9, 1972, Gifu Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese interface designer and often cited for his early work with emoji sets. Many refer to him as the creator of the emoji, a claim clarified in recent years. He was part of the team that created one of the first emojis used solely for communication, a heart-shaped pictogram that appeared on an NTT DoCoMo pager aimed at teenagers. It went onto become the Red Heart emoji.

This development and the aftermath of its use, led Kurita to design a set of 176 colored emojis. Many of the general-use emojis used today by Unicode can be traced back to Kurita's set. He now works for Dwango Co. Ltd., a Japanese games company owned by Kadokawa Dwango Corporation.

The NTT DoCoMo emoji set he created held is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.